Low-cost airline says why it ‘won’t bother going back to Israel’ | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

With the war between Israel and Gaza soon to enter its third year, U.S. airlines have taken differing approaches to flying into the country.

United Airlines (UAL) and Delta Air Lines (DAL) have committed to restarting flights from major markets such as Newark and JFK earlier this year. United will also resume more routes from Chicago and Washington Dulles come November.

American Airlines (AAL) , meanwhile, has named volatility in the Middle East and difficulty in “provid[ing] customers with certainty when planning travel to Tel Aviv” as the reasons it will not be restarting service for the time being.

International airlines have also hesitated amid repeated ceasefires and escalations between both the Israeli military and the islamist militant group Hamas, as well as Israel and Iran throughout 2025.

German flag carrier Lufthansa resumed some limited service into Ben Gurion International Airport (TLV) in August 2025, while Air France-KLM has been running flights between Paris and Tel Aviv since July.

Ryanair CEO says there is “a real possibility” airline will never fly to Israel

On the low-cost airline side, Dublin-based carrier Ryanair (RYAAY) had been set to restart service into Israel in October. That said, the airline’s longtime chief executive, Michael O’Leary, called this plan into question at the airline’s annual meeting on Sept. 11.

“There’s a real possibility that we won’t bother going back to Israel,” O’Leary said to investors. “Unless the Israelis get their act together and stop messing us around, frankly, we have far more growth elsewhere in Europe. This is going to be an ongoing issue for all airlines and all European citizens for the next number of years. The risk is one of continuous disruption, rather than of safety.”

While O’Leary’s comments reference the fact that Israeli authorities are requiring the airline to fly into the more expensive Terminal 3 at Ben Gurion Airport, volatility in the region and the high costs of restarting and then having to once again stop service have been among the reasons both mainstream and low-cost airlines have hesitated to resume their Israel service.

As international airlines stopped and restarted service into Israel, the country’s flag carrier El Al has benefited from being the sole operator of certain routes.

Image source&colon; Shutterstock

Which international airlines fly into Israel and which do not?

Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air resumed 10 routes into Tel Aviv from different European capitals at the start of August after what some news outlets have reported was a heated call in which Israeli Minister of Transport Miri Regev told Wizz Air CEO Joszef Varadi that she was waiting for him to restart service.

“The situation can change, and it has changed a few times before, but we have a very robust system to monitor this from a safety and security perspective,” Varadi said to local news outlets earlier in the summer

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Other airlines that have resumed service to Israel over the summer of 2026 include Scandinavian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, and ITA Airways. Lufthansa subsidiary Swiss International Airlines is set to restart its flight between Zurich and Tel Aviv on September 29.

Fellow low-cost carrier and Lufthansa company Eurowings has set its own restart date for October 26. British budget carrier Easyjet, meanwhile, has delayed restarting service by indicating that it will not resume flights until March 2026 at the earliest.